1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to software programs for processing messages. More particularly, the present invention relates to a mail program for processing multiple emails.
2. Description of the Related Art
Electronic mail (or “email”) is the transmission of a message over a network and has become a ubiquitous form of communication. Email is commonly processed by a mail program or a mail service which accesses mail servers in a local or remote network. A mail program (also known as a “mail client”) is a software application that is installed on a user's computer or PC and can either be a stand-alone program, such as Eudora or Outlook, or built into a Web browser. A mail service, on the other hand, is a software application that is accessed on the Web by a browser, such as Yahoo. Typical mail programs and mail services include such basic features as formatting, sending, receiving and organizing email. Email can be sent, for instance, over the Internet, private intranets or LANs. As used herein, however, the phrase “mail program” refers to any system that processes email, and includes both mail clients and mail services.
Users can send mail to a single recipient or broadcast the message to multiple users. The mail is usually sent to a mail server or host computer for the mail recipient. Most email include a header with three recipient fields, namely To, Cc (carbon copy) and Bcc (blind carbon copy). When sending to multiple recipients, the sender usually places the email address for each primary recipient(s) in the To field, and the email address for any secondary or additional recipient(s) in the Cc or Bcc fields. All the recipients of an email are able to view the name and/or email address for each of the To and Cc recipients, but the name and email address for each Bcc recipient only appear to that Bcc recipient.
One limitation of current mail programs, however, is that they are only able to process a single message for a single recipient or group of recipients. In addition, if the sender wishes to send a different message to a subset of recipients of a primary message, the sender would have to first send the primary email, then locate that primary email in his/her Sent mailbox (if the user's mail program is set up to automatically place all sent email in a Sent mailbox) and forward that primary email to the subset of recipients in a separate email with the different message.